Live from Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco: Android Hardware, Mozilla's Open Source AI & Venture Capital

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:32)
Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec. This is this annual gathering of leading CEOs, innovators, everybody who is harnessing technology to really change the world around us. Safe to say, once again, we're talking a lot about artificial intelligence.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:45)
Yeah, we've heard from the executives, venture capitalists, the founders at the forefront of the next era in technology, AI wearables, robotics, the blockchain, and more.

**Carol Massar** (0:53)
Someone who knows a lot about this space is our own Brad Stone. Sitting down next to me, we're going to get to him in just a moment.
We're also going to talk with our own Ed Ludlow. He's fresh off a conversation with the co-founder and executive chairman of Andral Industries. We're talking about Trey Stevens. So we'll talk about that. Also a really fascinating conversation with Cerebris Systems last night. So Ed's going to also dig into that as well. So that's coming your way.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:17)
Yeah. Joining us too a little later is Katie Haun, the former federal prosecutor. She was the first female general partner over at Engreason Horowitz. She's going to join us. She's got Haun Ventures just raised a billion dollars for new venture fund. Known for crypto, but branching out of crypto a little bit, but really also just staying in her lane.

**Carol Massar** (1:33)
Maybe looking for the next Cerebris.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:35)
Yeah, exactly.

**Carol Massar** (1:36)
Or something like that.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:37)
You can find it. Let me know.

**Carol Massar** (1:38)
Exactly. Hey, let's get right to Brad Stone. He's the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. He's also the author of many, many books including two on Amazon, The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound. He also wrote a book about the upstarts, I want to ask him about today's upstarts. Anyway, let's get right to it. Good to have you here.

**Brad Stone** (1:55)
How many of these have we done?

**Carol Massar** (1:57)
A lot.
There's so much coming at us. You walk in here and what's interesting for you.

**Brad Stone** (2:03)
Well, I mean, today is really in large part a conversation about AI.
Every time you talk about AI, you have this tension between sugar coating and candor, optimism and concern. That is no different. We heard from Yoshua Bengio, Professor University of Montreal, a godfather of AI saying, we cannot trust the big tech companies to do the right thing. Then Fei-Fei Li, a godmother of AI saying that she believes that all this friction is overblown, that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room and you have these polar opposites that are unrealistic. Then Dan Schulman, CEO of Verizon saying, a lot of the customer service employees are gone. I saw he spoke with a lot of candor today.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:45)
Where are we in a cycle right now, Brad? Because as Carol mentioned, you have the book about the upstarts, you've written about Amazon, you've written about tech companies in a completely different part, an era of Silicon Valley. Are we in a cycle right now that's any different than others?

**Brad Stone** (2:59)
Tim, I think you know the answer to that one. We are riding the wave. We are surfing it. It feels like at the peak of a massive pipe cycle.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:09)
Does it feel like this time is different, those dreaded words that I'm never allowed to say but I always do?

**Brad Stone** (3:15)
I mean, I would compare it to the Internet boom of the late 90s in which there's a lot of hype, a lot of froth. Not all the companies are real and are going to make it but that you know that the underlying change is so fundamental.
And AI, I think, you know, it changes everything. It's already changed the way we work, the way our company works. I think it's happening across the board. And we're just at the beginning of realizing the promise.

**Carol Massar** (3:40)
You know, but I also think about, you know, the intersection of technology and money and people spending a lot, chasing to be the first, the best in this race. But I wonder how much of that clouds the judgment of whether or not that race makes sense in the end.

**Brad Stone** (3:57)
Right. And so we're talking about perceptions and valuations. But look, I mean, we had Daniela Amode, the co-founder of Anthropic. You know, she gets on stage and says, you know, this is this build out is costing a lot of money. So we're going to go tap the public markets. But we've already seen, though, that those offerings are generating a lot of excitement. The excitement is real. And it has paid off for different investors at different levels of the ecosystem.